The youth protection commission under Régine Laurent will hear first from young adults who were in the system.Vincenzo D'Alto / Montreal Gazette file photo

The special commission into children’s rights in Quebec was sparked by the death of a neglected Granby girl.

Nancy Audet’s earliest memory of the abuse she suffered as a child was being thrown down the stairs of her family’s residence in a village in Abitibi when she was around four years old and then being hauled to her room.

“I remember being dragged to my bed where I spent several hours,” Audet testified on Tuesday about the abuse she suffered at her mother’s hands. It was the opening day of a special provincial commission into youth protection and children’s rights that was set up in the wake of the death of a neglected girl in Granby in April.

Audet said it was her father who found her on her bed and brought her to a hospital.

And while in the ER, she said, her father told her confidentially that he had to lie about how she got there since the personnel had wanted to phone the police.

So Audet was sent home. And the abuse — both physical and psychological — continued for years with almost no help or follow-up from Quebec’s youth protection services despite her suicidal thoughts from as young as five years old, an anonymous tip to authorities when she was seven that led to “a 30-second meeting” between her mother and a youth protection worker and an episode of running away at 14 that resulted in a short stint in a youth protection centre.

“I wasn’t followed by a social worker, I didn’t receive the services of a psychologist,” Audet told the commission, as a friend sat next to her for moral support. The friend, whom she met at age 12, was a beacon during her adolescence, Audet said, showing her that loving families do exist.

Sports reporter Nancy Audet left members of the 12-person Laurent Commission in tears on Tuesday as she testified about the abuse she suffered through as a child.John Mahoney /
Montreal Gazette

If anything, Audet said, it was only thanks to the help of a handful of caring people, including her friend and her friend’s parents, a few teachers and a foster parent named Rose-Aimée who came to her rescue, that she managed to graduate from high school, attend university and emancipate herself.

Audet, who is a television sports journalist, left members of the 12-person commission in tears.

The special commission will be holding hearings through December. Its mandate is to examine youth protection services, the laws that govern them and the role of the courts, social services and other intervenors.

The commission is to submit its recommendations to the government by Nov. 30, 2020.

“We have failed as a society. Our being here today is an admission of failure,” commission chairperson Régine Laurent said in opening remarks that launched the first day of the inquiry in Montreal.

“It is a sad thing that we must be here today,” after the death of the child in Granby, Laurent said.

At the end of her opening statement, Laurent, emotional and with a hoarse voice, referred in Créole to the child, who cannot be named because of child protection regulations, as “Ti-Lilly,” her name for the “martyr of Granby.”

“Since you died, I gave you a first name. You could have been my granddaughter. You would have turned eight a week ago.”

Before Audet, the panel heard from a committee of young adults who spent years in the youth protection system.

One spoke of rape, another of self-harming and being placed in isolation in a youth protection centre.

Émilie Roy said that to this day she feels safe when she has her key chain in her hand, because the keys represent the way out of the isolation unit.

“The isolation units in youth centres need to be re-thought from A to Z,” she told the commission.

They also talked about the difficult transition to the adult world after leaving the youth protection system at age 18 and suddenly finding themselves without support or resources and confronting the challenges of finding a job and lodging and of rebuilding social networks.

Audet concurred that anyone in youth protection needs to be followed up after they enter adulthood.

She also suggested other areas needing improvement. They include regular visits by social workers to troubled homes, better prevention programs in poor neighbourhoods and an effort to restore the public’s confidence in Quebec’s youth protection system.

Audet said she only came to terms with her childhood and was ready for motherhood after she started working and was able to afford the services of psychologists. It took hard work, she added, to overcome the shame and concern that those around her would stop loving her and lose respect if they knew she had been abandoned.

Even so, Audet only spoke out publicly about her experiences for the first time six months ago.

“I told myself that I should be an example for the children who are going through what I went through,” she told the commission, her voice breaking.

“I have to, at 42 years of age, be able to hold myself up and be proud of my journey and be able to say to children and adolescents who are today under youth protection services that it’s possible to succeed with a lot of work and a lot of help.”

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